electro-textual

Link : CCK08: Power and Auto-Subscribe (the connectivism forums, week 08).

In week 08, Stephen decided to exert his power over the masses of people involved in the massive OOC known as connectivism 08. Through the flick of a switch, he drew many back into public conversation.

People who know the forum software called “Moodle”, will know that you can “force” your enrolled students to receive copies forum posts via email. Stephen flicked this switch, and hundreds of people around the world started to experience Inbox Pressure from all the messages. (ironically many of the messages were complaining about the inbox pressure, while adding to it  ;-]

“Moodle offers me the option to ‘force everyone to be subscribed to this forum’. Given that this week we are talking about Power, Authority, and Control… what did you think about that?” Stephen’s keyboard boomed into inboxes around the world.

The pressure for some was too great. He was accused of abusing his power, of being evil, a trickster. Some people decided then and there to leave the course.

Others appreciated the humour of the initiative (a game-like foray into how power works in teaching and learning), and some even said they would switch on their own subscription. i was among this crowd, partly because i always set my Moodle forum email options to Full Daily Digest, which protects me from inbox flooding.

Michael Coghlan offered his perspective .. on how he uses Moodle with his classes.

a) first include people (via “Auto-Subscribe”), then
b) empower them to understand and change their settings if they will.

i never thought to Force Subscribe, but i might just try michael’s approach next time ;-] A judicious use of power.
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Recently in our intranet i’ve started setting people’s email to Full Daily Digest as default, when i first join them up .. because most people get annoyed if they receive a single email per forum posting.

i find it easier to do that for them, than to experience their annoyance and then explain how they have the power to change .. (Yes i have the power to include that option when i bulk subscribe new users.)

kind regards, michael

*(ooc = open online course)

photo credit: tom.arthur

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